


only so far

by irrationalqueer



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Closeted Character, Gen, comphet hell, just sad gay feelings, pre-bly manor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-14 01:27:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29785074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irrationalqueer/pseuds/irrationalqueer
Summary: She feels comfortable and safe and content, and she doesn’t understand the things that are missing.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11





	only so far

Dani smooths her hand down her skirt, pressing out nonexistent wrinkles. She looks exactly the same in the mirror, but a semester of college away from home has changed everything, and it feels like it’s written all over her face. She can’t comprehend how it’s possible to look the same after all that she’s done and seen - she doesn’t feel like the same person at all, but Eddie and his mother had greeted her with the same excitement and warmth she’d always felt from them. 

She remembers girls at school gossiping, swearing people looked at them differently after having sex for the first time; they flaunted the feeling like a badge of honor. But nobody had looked at her or Eddie differently after prom - they’d been a unit their whole lives; she supposes it had been expected. But nobody at university looked at her differently when she came home disheveled and in a hurry the night after a study date with the red-haired girl in her english class, either. College is a different world, she’s discovered. Here, in this small town in the middle of the country, she feels as though there are a million eyes on her everywhere she goes. She feels them in the dark, when she’s trying to sleep, fighting to push the images of that night out of her memory. She feels them even when she’s in Eddie’s arms, judging her for something she can’t take back, doesn’t even know if she wants to take back.

Dani wonders, sometimes. If the things she’d felt that night - things she’d never felt before - were things Eddie always felt with her. If the other girls bragged about their boyfriends because they’d felt that way all along. She’d thought she understood love, affection, until a girl with long hair and the bluest eyes she’d ever seen had taken her face between her hands and kissed her in a way she’d never been kissed before. It felt like the way Eddie described wearing glasses for the first time had felt. It felt like something terrifying that she wasn’t allowed to have. She wonders if she’s an anomaly or something else entirely.

Eddie is agreeable and polite, he’s intelligent and believes she is too and would never treat her as less than. He’s been her best friend her whole life, her first boyfriend, and she knows he believes he’ll be her last. But she didn’t think of him while she was away. And when she looks at him, she feels none of the warm weightlessness she feels looking at the girls in her classes. She feels comfortable and safe and content, and she doesn’t understand the things that are missing.

Here, in her childhood bedroom and delicate dress, she shakes her head. She gathers her things, coat and purse hung neatly by the door, and makes her way to the Christmas party she’s almost certainly late for at this point. She takes a deep breath before stepping into the room. Eddie raises his hand, catching her attention from the doorway. She smiles, takes her place next to his side. His arm comes up automatically to wrap around her waist, slightly too high to really be comfortable, but still familiar. She ignores the lump she can feel in his jacket pocket - focuses on the things she knows for sure. Eddie is a sensible man, patient and kind. A good man. He loves her. Their reflection in the glass of the window is pretty, from this distance; it almost looks right. Dani swallows hard, forces her eyes away from the window and focuses on the man next to her.

**Author's Note:**

> loosely inspired by 'tis the damn season by taylor swift (title also from the song)


End file.
